How I Spent My Weekend,

or "Look, Anonymous, I stepped up my game so screw your 'Yawns'."

On Friday afternoon, I had to deliver some important pleadings to opposing counsel. In Ogden. I don't trust this particular attorney (not just because of the office in Ogden), and so I took a witness with me to attest to my delivery of the pleadings. B-lo had the day off so she played witness. I delivered the pleadings, and the boring part of the story is over.

Next, I decided to tackle a goal I've had for quite a while: a 25th Street pub crawl. If you don't know about Ogden's HISTORIC 25th Street, Google it or Wiki it. That's not my story to tell.

First stop (after a late lunch/early dinner at Roosters), was Kokomo Club (well, first stop was actually a place called Brewski's, but I didn't like the looks of it so it was a walk in, pivot, walk out situation).

Here is Kokomo Club:

Go ahead right now and get "Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya, Key Largo, Bahamas come on pretty mama" right out of your head. The place had a nice jukebox (oddly, no Kokomo, however), videogames, cheap prices, and a rough clientele. In fact, the clientele, well one client in particular, was so rough that a strange girl/woman first threatened to kill B-Lo in the bathroom, and then hollered at me that I was "in the wrong bar." I call that ambience. B-lo calls the manager. She got that rough yeti thrown out.
B-lo and I settled in to play the videogames. You know in Season 2 of Big Love how Bill buys the business that distributes videogames for clubs and bars? Well, this was a low, low budget version of one of those. The highlight was a game with a little lady monkey sitting in a bar. The bartender slides drinks at her and she drinks everyone that comes her way. So long as she is sitting upright on the stool. It's the player's job to keep her balanced on the barstool and feed her water every now and then so she can keep drinking. So basically it was like Stella was right there with us. (I kid, Stella, I kid. More like Leah.)

Here's a shot of the game. Seriously, you should play this game.

The bathrooms were as rough as the clientele. Brace yourselves for a shot of the men's room:

Your eyes aren't deceiving you: that is a trough. I haven't seen (or used one of those) in a VERY LONG TIME. Maybe the last time I went to a rodeo. In Wyoming. Above the trough is a vending machine. You want to know what's in it, don't you? Here you go:

I paid fifty cents to satiate your curiosity. That is a patriotic tickler. Way better than your average flag lapel pin for advertising patriotism. And you would expect there to be alot of patriots in the place. With guns. (EDIT: Looking at that novelty up close, I see it is actually a French tickler - figures - so nevermind the patriotric bit.) I figured there were gun toting Americans amongst us due to the presence of this guy:

No, no not me. The venison above. See? That means patriots in the house.

I played quite a few songs on the jukebox. A sampling: Pleasure Principle, Janet Jackson; Vienna, Billy Joel; Lonesome Loser, Little River Band; Hysteria, Def Leppard; a Journey song; and an odd mix of mid to late 90's hits that were inexplicably present). It's a long ride from Ogden to downtown SLC, so we called it a night after Kokomo.

That brings me to Saturday. A rather productive cleaning/organizing/sorting day for me including a drop-off at Deseret Industries. I went through my cassette tape collection (you remember those, right?), and threw out all dubbed copies of albums. I kept all mix tapes. I then sorted original cassettes into a double stack case. And lamented what to do with it. In this age of cds, iTunes, and digital downloads, I really have no use for tapes. And I'm not even certain there is a demand for tapes in any circle or fringe group. I've never heard anyone say they prefer cassette tapes over cds, generally it's just LPs vs. cds and digital downloads. So I thought about eBaying the whole thing, but that's not really my scene. I buy from eBay, but I have yet to sell on eBay. I think I will post my casette tape inventory on here in the coming days, and you, dear readers, can tell me if I should bother selling or simply just depose.

I also cleaned out the contents of a rarely used digital camera. The last picture I took:

That's Beck. And, well, yeah he really doesn't look like that anymore. In fact, I don't remember him ever looking like that. Clearly I haven't used that camera in quite a while.

As a reward for my good, hard cleaning work, I went to the Rachael Yamagata/Mandy Moore concert at the Avalon Theater. Yes, you read that right. That Mandy Moore. I really like Rachael Yamagata, but wasn't to sure about Mandy. I was initially put-off by the fact that she dated Wilmer Valderama. Zach Braff, that's fine. Susie reminded me that she also dated Andy Roddick, so I forgave the WV bit. Anyway, the concert was really good. Surprisingly good. She's super sweet.

But, that's not the exciting part of the night. In between Rachael's set and Mandy's set I walked across the street to a place called The Dawg Pound. Sort of a meeting place for the really, quintessentially cultured, hip, educated people of Salt Lake City. They serve fine refreshments like this:

Further evidence of the witty, intellectual, refined nature of this establishment
was this sign in the men's room:

(Clint Lewis, if you want me to take this down, just e-mail. Though quite frankly, it looks like you're doing a-okay with your shooting game.)

Now, ladies and gentlemen, as we say in the law, "The sign speaks for itself." (For context, it was right above a urinal. But you probably figured that out. Sign speaks for itself.)

Further, with respect to Mandy, she came and she gave without taking:

Actually, that might be Rachael. You see, Rachael was wearing a silver baby-doll dress and I swear she looked like a tin foil dinner. You know with the hamburger, potatoes, carrots, onions? Some A-1 sauce around her neck would have been the perfect accessory. Especially up Mueller Canyon.

Sunday was pretty quiet. You see, I went to conference:

Not really, but as you can tell, I came pretty damn close. For breakfast I had cappuccino, a soft baked chocoloate chip cookie, and Haagen Daz:

(No, I am not Bridget Jones.)

When it was time for lunch, I made hamburger soup - from scratch. Check it:

No, it's not pretty, but it suited the day.

Late afternoon, I rented a couple discs of season 1 of Dexter
and also Rosemary's Baby- which I've never seen (and still have yet to - maybe tonight).

And that, in a photographic nutshell, was my weekend. Certainly more than an anonymous YAWN but ever so much less than a banshee SCREAM.

And because I've been quiet for over a week now, I'll share a couple things I've been thinking about:

1. Where are the Gap TV adverts? It's like, all of a sudden, they stopped doing Fall Into the Gap tv campaigns with Earth Wind & Fire singing September.

2. Those billboards all over town that show a picture of a woman and the phrase: "Hit A Pedestrian - Change Your Lives". I understand that they probably mean change your lives for the worse, but come on. We, as consumers, have been trained that "Change Your Life" in advertising is usually a selling point, not a warning. Not good ad.

3. I am currently reading Rosie's Celeb Detox. I like her.

4. I am thankful for all the people out there who, unlike me, take an active interest in their blog and update it regularly. I appreciate that, and hope you don't mind my lurking and taking without giving.

Today's Song: 1, 2, 3, 4 aka Sumpin' New, Coolio